Scientists Have Decoded the Universal Language of Honey Bees

By: Andrea Michelson

August 01, 2019

A world where bees and humans can communicate might sound like something straight out of a children's animated film ("Bee Movie," anyone?). But scientists just made a real-life breakthrough in understanding how bees talk to each other. In a paper appearing in the April edition of Animal Behavior, researchers shared the discovery of a universal calibration that makes it possible to decode honey bee waggle dances across sub-species and landscapes. While we won't be talking to bees anytime soon, this finding could help us maintain existing bee populations.

Dance, Honey Bee, Dance

If you're not an apiarist, you may be wondering what in the world a waggle dance is. When a worker bee finds a new nectar source nearby, it dances in a distinctive figure-eight pattern to alert other bees of the good news. There's even a designated "dance floor" near the entrance of the hive where waggle dances take place.

Honey bees aren't waggling willy-nilly, though. Certain aspects of the dance communicate details about the nectar source. How long the dance lasts corresponds with the distance to the source, for instance, and the angle of the bee's dancing body relative to the sun indicates the direction of the source. We've known that part for a while; Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch won a Nobel Prize in 1973 for being the first to discover the meaning of waggle dances.

Until recently, von Frisch's model was the "bee-all" and end-all of waggle dance decoding. However, Virginia Tech researchers Margaret Couvillon and Roger Schürch noticed that bees communicating the same nectar source sometimes vary their waggle dances.

The husband-and-wife duo decided to develop their own "distance-duration calibration system" that factored in "noise," or variation between bees who visit the same source. They discovered that that bee-to-bee variation is so high, it renders the location and sub-species of the bee biologically irrelevant. That made it possible for them to create a universal calibration for decoding waggle dances.

Save the Bees, Please

Why would humans want to understand bees, anyway? To start, the universal calibration makes it possible for researchers worldwide to understand where bees are collecting food. This knowledge can inform bee-friendly planting practices.

Understanding waggle dances also makes it possible to use bees as a way to monitor the environment, Couvillon said in a press release.

"The bees can tell us in high spatial and temporal resolution where forage is available and at what times of the year," she said. "So, if you want to build a mall for example, we would know if prime pollinator habitat would be destroyed. And, where bees forage, other species forage as well. Conservation efforts can follow."

And why save the bees? According to Greenpeace USA, 70 out of the top 100 food crops are pollinated by bees. If you do the math, that means bees are responsible for one of every three bites of food you eat. The biggest threats to bees right now are pesticides and habitat loss, which could be minimized by using information about where bees forage.

Couvillon and Schürch's latest decoding model doesn't give real-time information about where bees go, as it takes some time and effort to videotape and analyze waggle dances. But they're hoping to streamline the process so that one day, they'll be able to track bees instantaneously.

This article first appeared on Curiosity.com.

Next Up

We Have Liftoff: Congratulations to NASA and SpaceX

Here's to NASA, SpaceX, Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, and all of the engineers, scientists, and staff involved with the Saturday, May 30th historical launch.

What If Dark Matter Doesn't Exist and the Law of Gravity Is Wrong?

Dark matter and gravity have scientists at odds.

Wild Climate Ride Expected as Cryptocurrency Popularity Fuels Power Consumption

Bitcoin’s wild speculation and surging popularity has caused scientists and economic analysts to rate the digital cryptocurrency as a danger to the environment. More than 60% of Bitcoin’s mining cost is in the electricity it uses. And as its value rises, so does the entire currency’s energy consumption and its potential impact on climate change.

Airship Renaissance is Pushing Balloon Technology to the Limits

Airships seem like technology from a bygone era. But when a group of British scientists took to the skies above Florida in a Skyship 600, it could have been as champions of a new age in lighter-than-air transport. Drifting among the clouds, it showed there was a place for airships in the 21st century.

What the Missing Antarctic Microbes Mean for Life on Other Planets

Scientists searching for microbes in Antarctica came up with none. What could these findings mean for the possibility of life beyond earth?

Waste Heat Can Be Transformed Into Abundant Clean Electricity

Waste heat is a worldwide energy problem most people have probably never heard about. Every machine and power station, even renewable energy like wind and solar, creates heat that is simply lost in the atmosphere. Thankfully, scientists and engineers are devoted to capturing heat and transforming it into useful electricity.

Scientists Are Resurrecting the Tasmanian Tiger from Extinction

Colossal Biosciences has announced it has begun work on the de-extinction of the thylacine, an iconic Australian marsupial eradicated by human hunting in 1936. Learn how they plan to do it in an exclusive interview with marsupial evolutionary biologist Andrew Pask Ph.D. and Colossal Co-Founder Ben Lamm.

Scientists in China Discover Rare Moon Crystal that Could Power Earth

A rare lunar crystal found on the near side of the moon is giving scientists hope of providing limitless power for the world – forever.

Thousands of Bacterial Enzymes Hold the Key to Plastic Pollution Clean-up

Scientists suggest that people ingest at least 50,000 plastic particles a year. Health issues linked to the way plastic chemicals act on the body include cancer and infertility. And investigations show that we are breathing in 100 times more microplastics in our homes than was previously thought. So what can help tackle plastic pollution?

Polar Heatwaves Raise Alarm On Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise

Polar heatwaves in the Arctic and Antarctic have climate scientists concerned about the possibility of rapid climate breakdown. Soaring seasonal temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius above normal in Antarctica and more than 20 Celsius in the Arctic could be a sign of cataclysmic shifts in both regions.